I think OP's point is that it's not GPIB, it's "GPIB", a.k.a. something that kind of looks like gpib if you squint, but really is some custom derivative that is only supported by one obscure piece of DOS-only software that doesn't work with more then 8MB of ram.

Those USB-GPIB tools work reasonably well for getting plots, but if you have an instrument that does weird things you're generally SOL.

Unfortunately, one instrument computer is running DOS and I've never found a way to get USB working. I do have one of the adapters and it works seamlessly for newer implementations. If it works for DOS, it is beyond my skill level. By the way, this instrument is still world class in terms of accuracy and precision. To replace it would be 6 figures, not to mention having to deal with modern software, which is so much worse.

I did think I could potentially use the USB to GPIB and interact directly over serial. There's one paper from the early 90s that describes the existence of a programming manual for the instrument, and gives a couple BASIC examples for how to do a certain type of analysis. But the actual programming manual itself seems lost to time. So for now, we are just limping along from vintage PC to vintage PC. We finally got one that uses ATX power supplies, so it should be easier to maintain.

A few of my chromatographs are over 30 years old and were made before there was even an HPIB adapter available.

Just doing the same old thing decade after decade.

However when I got to the employer the instruments had long been equipped with the HPIB interface option, but there was only one PC with an ISA HPIB card on one instrument. The others had HPIB networking a few instruments together amongst themselves, but interfaced to the PC through a modern HPIB-to-USB adapter.

One mass spectrometer just plain needs Windows 2000 for its software. Nothing newer will do. Lots of others are on XP.

The IT operators had begun moving office PC's to virtual, so virtual desktops were what they had for two newly purchased lab instruments.

It was a shitshow and eventually one of the robotic samplers destroyed itself not just virtually. It was never going to work again in reality.

This was not acceptable, labs have had computers a lot longer than PC's, and PC's a lot longer than offices have, and offices have had PC's a lot longer than they have had networks. And IT already had it's hands more than full with office machines and internet alone, where they were gaining expertise for our particular type of business which originally "networked" offices around the world quite well using Teletype. It was plain to see that network experts were only going to need a few years of chemistry lessons before they will have anything to offer the labs.

One of the most valuable assets is to have pioneering experience with computerized chemistry successfully for years before the mainstream arrival of desktop networks. How else would you know what computers would be capable of except at times when they were nothing but helpful?

So I kicked out IT and got 100x reliability. Didn't need their network printer anyway, and especially not the internet or remote access, focusing instead on making vintage instruments have more productive uptime than warranted purchases under vendor support.

Now it's all on my Windows 11 isolated lab network where I have integrated the latest vendor software packages to meet our particular client requirements like IT never would be able to. The older instruments each have as new a PC as I could get to run a proper vintage software for that particular model, this wasn't easy but it just works now.

Turns out the 30-year-old industrial hardware is way more reliable than the best IT can do with what they have to work with.

But we knew that.